


Hay Fever

by avawtsn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Domestic Fluff, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV John Watson, Sickfic, all days except one, all the fluff turns into angst by the end of the day, consulting detectives get gigglefits too, gratuitous lisping, post series 3, sort of a sickfic anyway, springlock exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avawtsn/pseuds/avawtsn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock Holmes gets hay fever, gets a lisp, gets quiet, gets John Watson, and gets the giggles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hay Fever

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Your-Average-Joke](http://your-average-joke.tumblr.com) for the springlock exchange. Prompt was **(optionally humorous) fluff? My heart hurts for Pining!Sherlock right now, so maybe something comfort-related?**. I hope I delivered in some of that, anyway.
> 
> Betaed by the very wonderful Causidicus, who was an utter ~~champ~~ ~~doll~~ ANGEL at turning out comments in the space of an afternoon. I messed about with it after that, so all other mistakes and missteps are my own. 
> 
>  
> 
> And thank you very much for the twitter handholding while I grappled with this fic: Passeriform, Afoolofatook, Kiraivy2, Queersherlockian, Loudestsubtext, Geekydreamer, Galinthegreyhat, Abbykate, and Bilbspantaloons. There are a ton of you because I was a downright mess, and each of you represented beautiful tiny 140 character oases from my writerly self loathing. I really mean it; thank you.
> 
>  
> 
> And here, have a little illustration of Sherlock I did in the opening scene, because yes, I drew my own fic. 
> 
>  

On Wednesday evening, when John comes home from surgery, he finds his git of a flatmate flopped out on the sofa, laid out like a crime scene. Face up, mouth barely open in an angry moue, brows knitted together. His normally pristine curls have been thoughtlessly and obviously raked through. His right leg sits bent and hoisted above the sofa back, while the left spills thoughtlessly to the floor. And his arms, normally steepled and perfectly stoic when he's in his usual thinking pose, are instead splayed out, one over his head and the arm of the sofa. The other is extended at such an awkward angle away from him, knuckles trailing the ground, that for a moment John thinks it might just be broken.

"Case?" John ventures. The haphazard lines of him say "strop" and John says a quick prayer that this not be a black mood. 

Sherlock's mouth closes only for his lip to turn up in a sarcastic sneer. "Ath uthual, John --" 

His voice is nasal, nearly a full octave higher than usual, and the obvious lisp lingers in the air between them. Sherlock's jaw continues to work, but no sound comes out, like the power's been cut to the receiver. His eyes have grown impossibly round, and he looks not unlike a fish gaping for air, equal parts shocked and confused. 

A laugh bolts out of John's chest so quickly, he doesn't have time to register it. "Oh my god, Sherlock Holmes, are you  _sick_?" 

Sherlock has flushed an adorable carnation pink and refuses, or is unable, to speak. 

Yes, John has the slow realisation, has an S in it. 

"Clearly." 

_Obviously_ , John thinks with an unprecedented amount of glee,  _also_  has an S sound in it. 

"I had not...known my allergy...hay fever to be quite..." 

Quite so bad,  _quite thith bad_ , John thinks hysterically. He's trying to suppress his spasms of laughter but it's not working completely. Something very basic to his English nature has evidently broken loose, and he winds up grinning brokenly at Sherlock, unable to keep the affection out of his face. 

"Say no more," John says, holding up a hand, suddenly unable to keep S sounds out of his thoughts. "Sorry. Sorry. Right. Sorry, Sherlock," he manages before clearing his throat. Anything to fight back a fit of giggles. 

Sherlock sits up, glaring daggers and flushing crimson, but the self-righteous look doesn't hold. The poor man is congested completely and has to open his mouth again to breathe. And then a look of pure alarm crosses his face and he pinches three Kleenex from the box on the coffee table before holding them right beneath his nose.  

Now that he's upright, gravity is evidently working at the fluids in his sinuses, and John can only imagine too well the strop that's going to come with the symptoms of whatever this is that Sherlock's caught. John's helpless fondness aside, Sherlock's not built for withstanding the undignified assaults of headcolds. Criminal masterminds and locked room murders are one thing, but snuffles and sinusitis are quite another. 

Sherlock retakes his supine position on the couch, tissues hiding his obvious frown, but the angry knit of his brows says plenty.  

John wants to laugh, wants to memorise this moment, but he's far from having his own memory palace or the discipline to keep even a memory shack. Looking now at Sherlock throwing the biggest pout he's witnessed in ages, John is overwhelmed by the bone-deep compulsion to pat the overgrown child's mop of hair. It just seems fitting, given the strop.  

Sentiment, John thinks, even as it courses through him, softening the crease between his brows and making his fingers itch to touch. 

And maybe after the chaos of the last year, and maybe because Sherlock hasn't been brought this low in forever, and maybe because John anticipates an even larger strop as the symptoms go on, just this once, John indulges the compulsion. Quietly, he crosses the sitting room and reaches for Sherlock's curls. 

Sherlock startles when he realises John's fingers are in his hair. And then sliding down to rest against his forehead. 

"No fever," John says, voice soft. 

"No," Sherlock agrees. "I told you. It'th..." He frowns viciously then, but purses his lips and carries on. Irritated with himself. "Only hay fever." 

"Are you taking anything for it?" John gently pushes a curl away from Sherlock's forehead, leaves his finger lingering there to keep it from falling back. Sherlock, pale and drained, flushes a bit at the touch. John imagines Sherlock's breathing is louder than it normally is, but that's illness and Sherlockian petulance, nothing more. 

"Our landlady brought me a bag full earlier today. Practically a med kit." 

"Okay. Good." 

John removes his fingers reluctantly from Sherlock's hair and takes himself to the kitchen to busy himself with dinner. 

When Sherlock retreats to his room, dressing gown flapping behind him, John isn't particularly surprised. Part of him settles into the idea that Sherlock's going to be like this and worse in the coming days. Better get used to it now. 

John proceeds to make dinner for the next hour. The flat is quiet, Sherlock locked away in his room and out of John's sight. It feels a bit lonely, truth be told, and he's genuinely surprised when Sherlock reemerges, hair in even further disarray, to share dinner with him.  

It's spaghetti and yesterday's two leftover samosas, which they split. Announcement of the night's menu earns John a Death Star level glare focused on him, but the hostility fades almost as quickly. Sherlock is _surprisingly_ docile, fight drained out of him. He spends dinner mostly quiet, focused on breathing around forkfuls of pasta and looking miserable all the while. It is without a doubt the quietest meal he's shared with Sherlock in the year since he's moved back in, and John finds something aching inside him at the thought.  

Sherlock remains in the sitting room after that, though he hardly speaks for the rest of the evening.  

And yet he isn't quiet by any means either, John finds, after 10 minutes on the same page of his LeCarre novel. That part of his brain seemingly designated for the obsessive counting of Irene Adler's  _rude moan_  -- text messages is still alive and kicking after so many years. He's cataloged precisely 42 sniffles and 6 stroppy groans, as well as 8 of the loudest blowing of noses he's heard since flu season 2003, when he finally he gets up and makes Sherlock a mug of hot water with honey and lemon.  

He used to do this so often for Harry as kids, he's a little shocked he'd forgotten. Two things he'd never associated before: his own childhood and Sherlock. Really, Sherlock and childhood, full stop. He  _still_  can't imagine the Christmas dinners. The one time he nearly attended a Holmes Christmas dinner, Sherlock drugged everyone, whisked them away by helicopter, and Sherlock shot a man -- an emphatically not nice man. But probably not a normal Christmas in any event. Sherlock's mum would never stand for that twice. 

John presents the steaming mug silently. 

When Sherlock takes it, he sniffles in lieu of thanking John. But he does turn on the tail end of QI, and that's as solicitous as Sherlock gets even when he's well. It ought to feel comforting, like things are close to normal, but it lodges something unnamed in John's chest instead. 

Maybe it's down to the lisp, but Sherlock's  _unusually_  quiet. John had been expecting a complete strop to accompany the symptoms, but he's just been quiet, like a cat in need of a petting. But that's patently ridiculous; Sherlock prides himself on being above it all.  _Human error_ , John reminds himself. Married to the work.  _Transport_. 

John's mind wanders to what Sherlock must have been like during his two years dead. He wonders about the superhero who flung himself off Barts, the French waiter who surprised him at the Daffodil, the best man who vowed protection and support to him and Mary, the best friend who let Mary shoot him. And who knows where she was these days? In the wind like Irene Adler before her, John considers with a sigh. Finally, he thinks of the man who shot Magnussen. He touches each of his memories of Sherlock, turning them over in his mind like puzzle pieces. He's nowhere further in putting them together than he was a year ago, but at this point Sherlock is the Rubik's cube that he can't stop fiddling with. Perhaps was all along. 

John soaks in the white noise of the telly, one worried eye on Sherlock on the sofa, and gets another two pages in his novel before the end of the night. 

\- 

On Thursday, John works a double shift.  

He receives not a single text from Sherlock, which isn't unusual, but he winds up going the entire day without seeing Sherlock at all, which is, in a word, disappointing. The door to his bedroom remains closed, though there are more mugs on the counter than there were the night before.  

John does the dishes before bed and collapses, exhausted, thinking of Sherlock downstairs, wondering if he had any hot water with honey and lemon in those mugs. 

\- 

When John comes down the next morning for work, Sherlock has retaken his place on the couch, awake but glassy eyed. Something like comfort settles down into John's bones. Sherlock rumbles to life slightly as John putters about the kitchen for toast and instant coffee. 

"John," Sherlock calls out from the sitting room, voice a croak of its usual crisp baritone. 

"Mm yeah, Sherlock?" John drops the toast onto a plate and contemplates jams. The domesticity of this morning has put something of a spring in his step. 

"Don't go." 

At that, John leaves the plate on the table and pops his head out of the kitchen to take a look at Sherlock. 

"S-sorry?" 

"Don't go to work," Sherlock says, frowning as if John were a very dense child. 

"I have to go to work, Sherlock. I can't just...it's called a job for a reason." It isn't difficult to call up his exasperated face. 

"Don't go in," Sherlock repeats, and the repetition sets off something of an alarm bell in John. "Call out. Beg off. Demand another doctor come in for you." 

Ah. John feels the corner of his mouth quirk up of its own volition. "You mean you want me to call in sick, don't you?" 

Sherlock is silent, which is telling. 

"You want me to call in with an excuse so I can stay at home with you," John continues, smile working its way to his entire face now. 

"Don't be daft." 

"You mean  _stupid_. You've still got that lisp. After two days?" 

Sherlock glares at him, and John's face nearly cracks in two with the grin that's trying to overtake his features. He very  _very_  nearly takes him up on the request, contemplates actually staying home if Sherlock indulges him by actually voicing his request that he  _thtay_. 

"I'll have my phone on me. I'm not even going in for long; I'm just taking over for Lampkin, who has an appointment with his barrister." 

"Affair," Sherlock says with a roll of his eyes. 

"Sorry?" 

"Finally caught her...never mind. Affair. Boring." He gives a dismissive wave of his hand, which sends John back to the kitchen for his toast. 

"You'll be fine," John yells from the kitchen, smirk loud and clear. On the one hand, he feels better about Sherlock engaging him more than he did the night previous, but on the other, he's never dealt with a Sherlock who had asked so nicely -- and this counted as Sherlockian good manners -- for him to stay home. If he'd really wanted John to stay home, he'd have manufactured some way for him to stay, no doubt. Something to do with acids and noxious smells and all John's work clothes on fire in the bathtub in the name of science. But it was practically a politely worded request instead. And then dropped. 

John swallows the last of his dry toast and washes it down with terrible, horrid instant coffee. He goes into work to take over for Lampkin -- must take him out for drinks sometime if he's getting a divorce soon -- and keeps his phone in his pocket. 

Four minutes after arriving at the surgery, John's phone buzzes. 

**Bored. SH**

John huffs. Somewhat back to normal then. Normal is good. 

**That was fast.**

**Though the antihistamines have almost made the insomnia something of a challenge instead of a bore. SH**

John shakes his head. "Jesus Christ," he mutters to himself. 

**Why, how long has it been since you slept? Do I want to know?**

**What day is it? SH**

John lets out a long, self-indulgent sigh.  

**It's Friday, you berk.**

**Three days then. SH**

"Good lord, you fucking mad man," John mutters. 

**Is there any point in telling you to sleep? You know the dangers of sleep deprivation.**

John's fingers keep typing like they're on autopilot. 

**Seriously, Sherlock, you have to take care of yourself.**

He hits send. 

**You're supposed to be a graduate chemist. You understand things like electrolytes and ATP and the body needing fuel and replenishment.**

He hits send. 

**You read medical journals. You've dug up autopsy reports of people who have died from lack of sleep.**

He hits send. 

"Dr. Watson, Mrs. McCaffrey waiting in 14 for you," nurse Pilar says from the doorway. 

John looks up from his phone. "Yes, thank you, I'll be right there." One last text. 

**You're worth more than a hundred of the rest of us puny mortals as you're so quick to remind us, but you treat your transport like it's nothing. Are you so invested in burning out bright? Because I don't know if I could stand to watch that.**

His knuckles aren't white on his cheap plastic phone, but it's a very near thing. He doesn't know where the anger came from. He hits send. 

With a sense of vindictiveness, John turns his phone from vibrate to mute, slips it into his pocket, and goes to see his patient in 14. 

Twenty two minutes later, after advising Mrs. McCaffrey to look into vitamin D supplements, John checks his phone and sees no response from Sherlock. 

The next seven patients go by very, very slowly. And when Lampkin comes back from the barrister's -- harried, grumpy, and distracted -- John goes home with a distinctly uneasy feeling in his stomach. He hopes Sherlock's fallen asleep, but isn't feeling optimistic. 

When he arrives home, Sherlock is not on the couch. The door to his bedroom is closed, so John goes up to his room and takes a fitful nap. He wakes up feeling more exhausted than he was this morning and punches his pillow before trudging downstairs. On the stairs, he checks his phone and stops mid-step when he sees two unread messages from Sherlock. 

**I'm not invested, as you say, in burning out bright, John. My mind just spins out of control sometimes and my body with it. Very few things rein it all in. SH**

John suddenly thinks of cocaine and danger nights and feels his heart attempt to punch through his chest at the thought that  _he should have stayed home with Sherlock today_. He opens the next text. 

**It's not a danger night. I'm attempting to sleep but suspect I'll not be able to. Look in on me if you wish. SH**

John goes straight to Sherlock's room, the door to which is now ajar. Sherlock stirs when the door creaks open and he blinks several times before seeming to gather why John's at the door. 

"Come in. You'll want to check up on me," he croaks out. 

John steps into the room, feeling all of a sudden shy. He rarely comes in here and now he's a 40 year old RAMC veteran who's wilting like a teenage virgin. To shake himself out of it, he purposely sits on the bed, butting up right against Sherlock's hip. He realises too late that nothing but a million threadcount Egyptian cotton bedsheet sits between them. But at least Sherlock's wearing a shirt. A cotton, completely plain, utterly soft-looking sleep shirt. 

Steeling himself, John checks Sherlock's temperature, lymph nodes, pupils, and pulse. There's barely any point in checking for track marks, as Sherlock knows where to hide them if he really wants, but John scans his arms regardless. 

No signs of drug usage, but he's still clearly dehydrated, skin around his nose and mouth dry and inflamed. 

"I'll get you some water," John says quietly before getting up to fetch some from the kitchen. 

Sherlock sits up and drinks the entire glass in several loud gulps. John feels his cheeks warm when Sherlock lowers the glass and notices John had been watching him drink.  

"Hot water with lemon? Honey?" John offers, averting his eyes. 

"Maybe later," Sherlock says quietly after a long pause. 

"Will you try to get some sleep now then?" 

Sherlock gives another long pause, and John doesn't know if he's trying to formulate something that avoids his lisp or if it's something else entirely. Finally, he nods, saying nothing at all.  

John removes himself from the bed and makes his way to the door. He's just past the threshold when he thinks he hears Sherlock call him. 

"John? If I--" 

John pops his head through the door but meeting Sherlock's gaze has frozen the words he was about to say. 

"Yes?" 

"Never mind," Sherlock says, looking at his bedsheets and frowning. "Trivial thing. Nothing. But. Maybe." 

Sherlock's long pauses grow more awkward by the second and he runs his fingers through his hair. "Could you leave the telly on if you're out there? It...I like knowing where you are. In the flat." 

John opens and shuts his mouth dumbly. "Of--of course. I'll leave the door ajar. I--" John pauses to swallow. "Just call me if you need anything." 

"What could I need you for?" John  _thinks_  he hears Sherlock say, but when he snaps his gaze to Sherlock's face, he's unreadable and perfectly still.  

John just nods and makes his exit, feeling possibly more flustered than when he came in. What the hell was  _that_? 

He goes out and leaves the telly on as he puts together a cheese sandwich. It's a small, pitiful dinner, and he spends it sitting on the sofa and mulling over his mystery of a flatmate, laying all of 20 feet away and listening to the same crap telly he is. He feels like he's going to scream. 

\- 

John texts Lestrade to see if he wants to have a pint. 

\- 

It's late when John returns home. One pint had turned into four over the course of Blackheath taking Richmond, but mostly it was just nice to get out of the mental haze that was his current living conditions at 221B. Nice to know the rules of the game for once. 

He's feeling pleasantly sloshed when he arrives home, but he has to blink to ensure he's not hallucinating when he opens the door. Not only is Sherlock not asleep, but he's evidently trying to pour the contents of a cobalt tea pot into his left nostril. 

John staggers backward onto the front door, shutting it with something very like alarm working its way up his throat and cracking his voice. "What the bloody...are you pouring tea straight down your  _nose_? Sherlock, we have mugs and a whole sodding tea service set." 

Sherlock's mouth parts in an insulted huff and he lowers the tea pot from his face. "Have you never theen a neti pot? Really, John; I thought you were meant to be a  _doctor_." 

Sherlock's nose, John realises now that the pot is down, is redder and more raw than he's seen yet, and this time it perfectly matches Sherlock's puffy eyes. The grey-yellow-cerulean of those irises is nearly drowned out by just-as-vivid inflammation surrounding them, and Sherlock looks as unsharp and mussed as John's ever seen him. And that includes his stint as Shezza. 

"Right, right, sorry," John says, swallowing his lapse of memory, willing himself to be more sober than he is. Of course he knows what a neti pot is. He just hadn't expected to see Sherlock Holmes with one, that's all, and had never quite processed how much of a  _pot_  a neti pot actually was. That feels like an embarrassingly simple thought to have though and he vows to never acknowledge that he thought it.  

Sherlock looks at him, suspicious and knowing, all the same. John shakes off some of the sloshy feeling in his stomach and settles more consciously into Doctor mode. "I thought you were on medication." 

"Affirmative," Sherlock replies, clipped and stilted. He inhales noisily through his teeth and sits down on the couch in a huff. 

"Right...Spock," John says, frowning before realising that the lisp is still in play. He shakes it off. "You look like hell." 

John doesn't rush Sherlock by any means; it takes five strides just to reach him and Sherlock's watching him the entire way. But Sherlock seems surprised nonetheless when John crouches down, reaches for his forehead again and then lays the back of his fingers against Sherlock's exposed neck. Sherlock turns his head away toward the wall but doesn't otherwise move to get away. John's fingers slip to his pulse point, and a strained breath audibly escapes Sherlock, leaving his lips just parted. Or were they parted already? 

"Still no fever," John reports. He's hushed his voice, now that they're so close. He hadn't meant to. His voice is raw from the pub, and it sounds heartbreakingly intimate in the quiet sitting room. He watches Sherlock swallow. Doctor mode, John reminds himself.  _Doctor mode_. He lets his hand drop. 

"I know," Sherlock sniffs. "Like I told you before, it'th merely an allergy, hay fever, nothing more. I have not yet determined the underlying irritant." Despite the dropped hand, Sherlock's face remains resolutely turned away from John, the pale column of his neck bared in his thin cotton tee. 

"Could it be dust?" John ventures, eyes roaming up Sherlock's profile. His nose is practically glowing pink, his cupid's bow rubbed raw. His lips are chapped and dry, though he's licking them now. Pink tongue, just a flash. It will only leave them drier, John thinks, licking his own in sympathy. "Or -- or pollen? Something in one of your recent experiments?" 

A minute shake of his head, wild curls bouncing. Eyes lowered, almost...almost  _demure_. Is Sherlock being  _shy_? 

The thought makes John back away before his tipsy brain remembers he's crouched. He drops backwards to the floor in an ungraceful heap. "Sorry," he blurts out, feeling every last drop of the lager working its way through his system. "Sorry. One too many pints. What medicine have you taken?" 

Sherlock finally turns his head, reaches past John, and extracts a Boots branded plastic bag from under the coffee table. He shoves it at John's chest and the bag, grabbed carelessly, spills most of its contents when John tries to take it: a box of Benadryl capsules, Piriton tablets, three Value Health boxes, a green Zirtek box, a blue BecoAllergy box, and no fewer than three Boots branded containers. John peers inside the plastic bag and sees another box of Piriteze, Clarityn, and even a Prevalin Allergy Kids box. Alarmingly, more than half the boxes have been opened up. 

John snaps his gaze back to Sherlock and finds him turned away again. The neti pot sits forgotten on the floor. 

"Sherlock, you can't be serious...how many of these did you take? Which ones? Are you on more than one?" 

Sherlock gives a flippant, irritated wave of his hand. The muscles in his jaw flex before he speaks. "Enough. I wath going to dithtill down the active ingredienth of each, but it wath difficult making mythelf bend down over my microthcope or work a pipette, given my otolaryngial problem. I had been on only one mid-week, but after a day, the hay fever had not abated, tho I took another, then a third." 

Sherlock's normally crisp delivery is nothing short of a mutter, a disgruntled confession in the direction of the cushion, not John. 

"Sh-Sherlock, you can't do that! Just because the medications are over the counter doesn't--doesn't mean...Jesus, Sherlock, come off all of them  _at once_. Stop taking them  _immediately_ , do you hear me? You're probably making yourself sicker just by being on too many, Jesus  _Christ_." 

John the doctor is deeply outraged and sputtering indignation, but John the sloshed flatmate is radiating concern through his fingertips, evidently, which are carding through Sherlock's broken curls like they could coax the excess medication out of him through his follicles. 

John's fingers still when he realises. Sherlock has all but frozen, muscles completely locked and his head, as ever, is turned away. Something in John's chest clenches and threatens to never unfurl. The flat is quiet except for Sherlock's panting -- breathing? John shakes his head to clear it. He slumps back again, not having registered bolting up to touch Sherlock's hair. 

"You..." John starts, lost and desperate and inexpressibly sad. Between the alcohol and whatever else is buzzing inside John's chest, he's lost Doctor mode a while back. "You can't abuse your body like this, Sherlock. It's nothing to play with, your health. I know it's all just transport to you, but...but your body has its own needs. You're not a machine just because you pretend you are, and you're not a weaker person for having  _basic human needs_." 

Something in Sherlock's posture softens, and John wonders briefly if he's given too much of the game away. 

"Ignoring them is just going to run you into an early grave," John babbles on, clutching uselessly at the Boots bag just to busy his hands. "When your body craves water, you need to give it water, Sherlock. When you're sick, you need to take care of yourself. You only have the one body. I know you don't care about...I don't know  _what_  you care about, but I can't...I couldn't bear to watch you throw it all away again. I'll help you. You don't have to ask, but you have to  _let me know_  what you need. There isn't anything I wouldn't..." 

John trails off, having said far, far too much. And Sherlock remains uncharacteristically, deathly quiet. Every passing second of silence stabs John just a little further in his gut. 

So John gets up, steadies himself through the wooziness, and goes upstairs to his room. He doesn't look back at Sherlock. He'll think about moving out tomorrow. 

\- 

On Saturday morning, John wakes up half convinced that some of Sherlock's tobacco ash made its way under his eyelids during the night. When he blinks enough to adjust to the light in the room, he comes upon four, roughly sequential, realisations. 

1\. Despite being awake, John continues to hear snoring in the room. 

2\. John has been shoved to one side of his own bed, so that he faces in with only his arm venturing to the middle of the mattress. 

3\. Said arm is laid out underneath a mop of unruly curls belonging to one sleeping consulting detective. The tips of John's fingers are just carded into those locks and looking for all the world like they belong there. 

4\. John is shoved to the far edge of the bed because the sleep-warm body of said consulting detective is curled up against him. The long expanse of Sherlock's back, sheathed thinly in the grey jersey knit of his shirt, is against John's front. 

Upon this last realisation, John snaps his hand back as if burned. It's barely a conscious effort to do this, but it's a violent yank, and the sudden movement jerks Sherlock awake. He looks around blearily until his gaze settles on John. 

"What," John croaks out, and even his mouth feels like sandpaper. "What the  _hell_  are you doing in my bed, Sherlock?" 

Sherlock is very, very still. For someone so sleep-warm and bleary just a moment prior, he is suddenly very, very still. 

"Needs," he mumbles finally, averting his gaze. 

" _What_?" 

"Body had its own...thoughts. About what it needed. I thought it didn't, but then Wednesday. And also you said...you said so. And," he says, picking up speed and a familiar hint of petulance. "And you said that you didn't know what I wanted. There aren't many things that help, there aren't any people...there's just...you." 

John sputters for what feels like twenty seconds before blurting out, again, " _What_?" 

Sherlock scowls, and John brackets Sherlock's face in his hands in frustration, finally concerned that his genius of a flatmate has fried his brain to bits overnight. Sherlock seems to brace himself physically but stares right back at John, defiant. 

Pupils clear. Bleariness gone. Even the red eyes and puffiness are gone, though he's blushing harder by the second. Except for his searing glare, he seems practically normal for Sherlock Holmes. It's only his words that don't make a lick of sense. 

"Explain to me in plain English, please, what the bloody hell you meant by all that just now, or so help me I'll drag you to Barts to pee in a jar, Sherlock." 

Sherlock flinches at that but doesn't back out of John's strange embrace. "I couldn't sleep because of  _you_. I couldn't ask for what my body wanted because it was  _you_. I haven't felt right since you...since you petted my hair," he grits out. "I was doing  _fine_ , had been doing fine for years. I didn't need more than what we had. Even through the wedding, even through...I was doing perfectly fine until Wednesday, and you touched my hair with that look on your face, and then there were doors I couldn't close and I couldn't  _think_. I couldn't concentrate, couldn't speak, ask, or delete, and I couldn't  _go back_." 

Sherlock's eyes are imploring, bright and manic.  

"You said," he continues slowly. "You said you didn't know what I wanted. You said I didn't have to ask. You said there wasn't anything you wouldn't give." 

John flushes so deeply, he's nearly dizzy with the blood flow. "You're having me on," he whispers. 

"What?" Sherlock furrows his brow. John drops his hands like they've been burned. 

"You're taking the piss." 

"Wha--John? Seriously? You'd think I'd climb into your bed just to trick you into thinking--" 

"I don't know what to think, Sherlock!" John finds himself yelling. "You don't share anything with me! By your own design, I'm completely cut off from what you're thinking, and now you're telling me you, what, you love me back? You--you--" 

Sherlock's mouth presses against John's, cutting him off mid-word, and a hopeful silence descends on John's train of thought. Sherlock's lips are dry, the kiss clumsy and chaste, and in all reality probably relatively brief. But Sherlock is breathless when he rears back, eyes darting all over John's face like he's looking for tells. 

"Back?" Sherlock asks, panting, eyes wide. 

"What?" John says and he feels like the word's gotten stuck on his tongue at this point. 

"'You love me back' is what you said. That means you love me. You think I might love you  _back_ ," Sherlock enunciates clearly, eyes still scanning John's face for clues. "You love me." 

"I--I--I said--you--you can't--" John stammers out before Sherlock kisses him again, all warm breath and the slight sourness of sleep. And this time, John can feel Sherlock  _smiling_  as their mouths press together. When Sherlock removes his lips again, he looks like he must have when he was a child, just finished with his first experiment. He looks impossibly young and indecently pleased, and it's  _so_  different from the Sherlock John's seen in the flat these several days. John blinks as if trying to reset, sync his eyes with his brain. 

"You're...happy about this," John says slowly. He's very close to dizzy. Sherlock seems well again. He has to have gotten John sick, hay fever or not. This is a Stephen King book, and they've switched illness with health, insanity with sanity. 

Sherlock leans in, slowly this time, and kisses John again. This time, John watches Sherlock's eyes fall shut as he closes in, and he's momentarily fascinated before his own eyes slide closed too and he -- finally -- kisses back. The morning breath piques when they open their mouths to suckle on each other's respective lips, and then fades as they kiss past it.  

And then, there is shaking.  

It starts in Sherlock's shoulders and John feels his grin growing again under the press of his mouth. Before he knows it, Sherlock is convulsing with laughter in John's arms, and there's the brief paranoia that Sherlock is laughing  _at_  him, but it fades. John laughs with him, because this, this is some quality he's never seen before. Some puzzle piece of Sherlock that never fit before. This is Sherlock Holmes: gleeful, happy, and... 

"You love me," John says as he watches Sherlock practically crying from laughing so hard. "I love you and you...you love me back." 

The words are practically a spell, and Sherlock calms his laughter, but the smile lingers in his eyes. 

"You...you  _berk_ ," John laughs, shoving him straight in the chest. "You terrible sodding  _git_. Years. You said  _years_. You arsehole, you..." 

Sherlock shuts him up with another kiss, and this time when they part, John finds his fingers tangled up in Sherlock's curls. He starts laughing again, full of lightness and elbows, and John feels like he's holding a lanky six foot bag of kittens. 

On the fourth time kissing Sherlock Holmes, it's John who pulls back, wracked with giggles. 

"Why are _you_ laughing?" Sherlock asks, even as he's giggling along with him. John's heart could burst. 

"You _snore_." 

Sherlock's mouth forms a perfect O in his shock, and then they're giggling until they're breathless, recovered, and then laughing until their sides hurt. 

"Why? Why are you laughing?" John asks, wiping tears from his eyes. 

Sherlock's smile is blinding. 

"Because I keep thinking our first kiss was so bad that we're bound to improve on it every time," Sherlock says. "It can only get better from here." 

And it's such an un-Sherlockian thing to say, vulnerable and without guile, John doesn't even try to retain it for the memory shack for blackmailing later. He just rewards him with another kiss. And another. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh, how uncomfortable am I with fluff? I was deathly afraid, hysterical, histrionic, and kicking myself for not being able to stick with fluff. It kept going to angst, and I had major issues wrangling this fic. Ugh, feelings. Feelings with no porn. I'm much more comfortable with porn, so I think I'm going to head back there and try for a first time sequel fic for this, plus get to work on the other PWPs that have sprouted in my brain since (obviously) starting to work on teen-rated UST flangst.
> 
> Thank you for staying with me, if you've read this far.


End file.
